STARSHINE, THE OCEANAND THE UNICORN.
Chapter Four                                                                                                           Part Eleven



                ........ I stood apart from my body and looked down at it, asleep in the grass and the summer flowers.  On my right arm, a small brown snake was curled, its tail at my elbow and its head at my wrist.  It bit the back of my hand.  I felt the pain.  I saw myself wake with a start.  I sat up, I was frightened, I looked at the snake.  The snake spoke to me in whispers, it soothed me, insisting that it had bitten me in the name of love, there was no poison, only love.  So I lay down again and slept.  I stood over the sleeping body, watching.  The snake watched too, its head raised and its tiny eyes fixed on the sleeping face.  I kept watching.  Time passed. The body would not wake, it grew pale and thin, it was wasting, it was dying, and all the time the snake looked on as its own slow poison killed.  The snakes eyes were small points of light, they gleamed with a macabre hunger about to be satiated as the insidious death drew near ........




               I awoke, I sat up and sucked at the wound on the back of my hand and spat on the ground.  And again I sucked hard and spat hard until I was sure all the poison had been drawn.  It was then that I realised that I was no longer standing over my body looking on but it was I who had awoken and it was me who sucked at the back of my own hand.  I looked at my hand and there was no wound and there was no snake on my arm.
                I looked up at the sky.  It was evening, I had slept all day.  A tiny breeze tried to breathe through the suffocating air and thunder clouds drew their black shrouds across the sky.  I sat in the meadow as the first rain fell, each heavy drop was cold and cleansing.
                 White lightening filled the world, deep thunder rolled and echoed and rain spilled from the sky. The downpour drenched me.  Water ran from my hair and clothes, its coldness trickled against my skin.  My senses quickened.  I was aware of all my body.  My heart and soul were one with my limbs, my breasts, my belly and my womb and all of me was at one with the storm.  The storm filled me, I cried out to it, it clenched me then released me.  My dark journey was at an end.  I was purged.  I left the meadow. Guilt, poison and death all washed away and my life was reborn. I walked back to the cottage and the storm and the world walked with me.  I knew of the world's existence and I knew that the world knew of my existence.
                  It was night when I arrived back.  My husband stood at the back door ready to greet me with his anger.  My steps did not falter as I approached him.  He looked at my drenched hair and  my sodden hair and his eyes gleamed ready to strike.  But when the snake met my eyes it could find no virgin that had wandered away from her engagement party and come back with her dress all dirty and her hair all wild.  For the storm and the world were still with me and when the snake saw that my eyes held no fear and that my body stood straight and strong , it turned tail and ran to its armchair and its books. And there it stayed all night in silence.  Its fear and dread having been rejected by another, now turned in on itself.  The snake was poisoned with its own poison, an emptiness and confusion it would never understand.  While I lay upstairs, untortured at last, at peace in a dreamless sleep.    
               I awoke to the sound of the army car driving my husband away and I knew it was forever.  I got out of bed and went downstairs to the larder.  I poured the slow, smooth honey from its jar and retrieved the key.  I washed away its stickiness and took it back upstairs.  As I unlocked the drawer at the foot of the bed I was aware of how my body had changed.  My breathing had deepened, my movements were precise, my mind focused clearly and I could feel an intensity of purpose that looked outward and defined the past, present and future all at once within one sure beat of my heart.  As though all the shallow breaths, the dizziness, the fear that was blind, deaf and dumb and all the vagueness of before had belonged to a dewy white lava that had squirmed and wriggled with pain as it ate its way through mounds of lies and then hid itself away in  a long sleep. So now I had broken the chrysalis walls and emerged.  My wings had dried, they were strong and ready to fly.
                         I dressed simply, I wore my pearls and my only luggage was my hat box and its precious contents.  I left my wedding ring on the page of an opened book my husband had left on a desk and from the bookcase I took a bible, beautifully bound and scripted, it was the bible on which we had sworn our vows of marriage.
                          Lettie had arrived, she was standing in the kitchen doorway.  We stood silently, looking in through each others eyes, reflecting each other's strength and hope.  No words were said, for sisters, even when they part forever, never say goodbye.
                         Tom was at the front gate, his cap in hand and once again in our excitement we exchanged our idiot grins.
                          I walked away down the road to the village.